If Only He Would Get a Clue

 

Last week I wrote about a reader I call Bert, who on two occasions has referred to people who know less about grammar than he does as “the great unwashed.” Here's another e-mail he sent about one of my recent newspaper columns.

“This morning’s article reminds me of another of my ongoing complaints: the placement of the word 'only.' It is common to hear and read “only” toward the beginning of a sentence or thought, when it should be much later in order to modify what really is intended to be modified. Your article (four paragraphs from the end) says, 'People only began fussing over it in the mid-1960s.'

“You don’t mean that they only began, and didn’t continue or conclude; I’m sure that you mean that they began fussing only in the mid-1960s.  Your next paragraph correctly places the 'only': ' . . . "healthy’ means only ‘in good health’" . . .' -  right?  Nearly 100% of the time, Americans and Brits misplace a modifying 'only,' and while we understand the meaning, careful consideration shows that the 'only' is modifying the wrong thought when so placed.”

What’s Bert’s source, you may be wondering? He doesn’t have one. It’s simply not a rule that you must place “only” closest to the term it modifies. Like a lot of adverbs, “only” can modify whole sentences or thoughts. So its placement is flexible, just like “Soon I will leave,” “I will soon leave” and “I will leave soon.”

Plus, when nearly 100% of English speakers do something a certain way -- well, sorry Bert, but that’s how grammar rules are made. And saying that 99-plus percent of the population should do things your way just doesn’t fly.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 13th, 2014 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “If Only He Would Get a Clue”

  1. February 2, 2014 at 4:00 pm

    Bert's statement 'While we understand the meaning', does rather beg the question of what grammar is for? To help people communicate between one another or to comply with a set of artificial (and often arbitrary) rules.

    The stupidest example of this idea, put forward by some people who should really know better is the sentence 'He only died last week', suggesting that it means that he didn't do anything else last week but die. As though sentences like this came out of the blue, without any context.

    As linguists and writers have long pointed out, the most natural place for 'only' is usually before the verb, and this rarely gives room for any ambiguity. This is just rules for the sake of rules.

  2. June 28, 2014 at 8:37 pm

    I have a bit of a problem with this one. In the next to last paragraph above, the author tells us that "only" is a modifier. While that is true, it belongs to a special tiny class of modifiers known as "limiters", and as such, "only" and "just" really should go before the word or phrase they limit. They are not like "soon", which belongs to a large class of modifiers, and often can be placed in a variety of spots in the sentence.